Whose streets? Our streets. Globalise the Intifada. No fascists in our streets. The chants echo through British cities week after week. What began as sporadic moments of direct action has become an almost permanent feature of public life.
Motorways are blocked, runways sabotaged, factories defaced, and the streets themselves are taken over weekend after weekend by thousands, tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands. As we saw last weekend, those streets are now becoming contested spaces.
Two different tribes are coming out in ever greater numbers, flying different banners, shouting different slogans and holding fundamentally different beliefs. In just under three years, the country is lurching towards a political reckoning.
Current polling suggests the possibility of a seismic shift. Reform UK appears on course to become the largest party in the House of Commons at the next general election, although it could still fall forty or more seats short of a majority, especially after its recent dip in vote share at the local elections.
The centre-ground parties that have dominated British politics for generations are being squeezed from both sides.The question is no longer whether the backlash against endless disruption and rapid cultural change will arrive. It has already arrived. The real questions now are what form it will take and whether the state can contain the fractures it will produce.
A Reform-led government, or even a strong plurality, would be historic. Reform might look to the Democratic Unionist Party and the Ulster Unionist Party for support on confidence-and-supply votes, but there are nowhere near enough seats there.
They would need the Tory party to make any arrangement work. Yet that is where the difficulty lies. If the Tories improve their national vote, which seems almost certain, they will be deeply unwilling to enter any coalition or any formal deal as the junior partner. The example of the Liberal Democrats from the last coalition is one that is not lost on Tory Grandees.
The depth of the current political realignment makes any such accommodation toxic for them. Is a period of parliamentary deadlock followed by another election therefore more likely?
That outcome would only deepen public exhaustion with a political class seemingly incapable of delivering stable government. Meanwhile, on the streets, the usual suspects, the Blob, that loose but potent alliance of climate, Palestine, anti-deportation and identity activists, have mobilised as never before.
The direct-action groups that form the sharp end of this movement do not accept democratic verdicts they dislike. “Whose streets? Our streets” is not a slogan of persuasion. It is a declaration of ownership.
In the Celtic fringes, the rhetoric is hardening. Nationalist politicians in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland speak openly of secession or a constitutional crisis should a “far-right” government take power in Westminster.
In Northern Ireland, republican paramilitary remnants will watch developments with keen interest, ready to exploit any vacuum. In Liverpool, Manchester, London, the Midlands and the old industrial north, fear can turn visceral. Sections of Muslim, Black and other minority communities, primed by years of activist messaging and media framing, are preparing for the worst.
Rumours of camps and mass deportations will spread rapidly across social media. The sectarian tensions that Britain has been importing from the Middle East, Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond will find dangerous new flashpoints on British soil. The result rioting and street disorder on a scale never before seen in modern Britain.
On the other side, we may well see a counter-mobilisation. Ex-soldiers and ordinary citizens, frustrated by years of one-way disruption and two-tier policing, might begin to organise counter-marches and community defence groups. Some of these could take on a paramilitary flavour.
The police, already stretched by the huge surge in direct action and street violence, will find themselves caught in the middle in a way not seen since the miners’ strike of the 1980s. Will they, or the army, or even the monarchy, be able to hold the centre?
Throughout all of this, the agents of chaos, the direct-action networks, will continue their theatre of disruption, indifferent or actively hostile to democratic outcomes.
Foreign actors will watch with interest. The IRGC, Russia and Islamist networks will see rich opportunity in a fractured, inward-looking Britain. The ever-increasing likelihood of a spectacular terrorist outrage is growing just, as sectarian fault lines deepen.
This whirling dervish of political, ethnic and religious fracture is not inevitable, but it is surely the logical destination of a country that has allowed a small but highly motivated cadre of true believers to hold the rest of society to ransom through performative disruption.
Meanwhile, institutions hollowed out by decades of cultural capture stand by, unable or unwilling to intervene. The great historic institutions of the state, the Anglican Church, the judiciary, the military, the monarchy and the police, now look like hollowed-out shells of their former selves.
Whether they can still command the loyalty and respect needed to hold the centre will be the decisive question of the coming decade.
Thank you for listening or reading and I hope you will follow me into part 7 next week
Regards
Rory
